And This is Joy
by Late 2 The Party 2
Summary: Kara Zor-El, age 13, grew up in the foster care system in National City. Haven't slept in days, hopefully this makes sense. Give me your thoughts. Forgot about this updating but not sure if I should work this into something or not.
1. Chapter 1

**What's new? Kara travels to Earth at age 3, not 13. And? Her powers start at puberty, not immediately. I mean, if you know the damage Earth toddlers can cause, you know the world would end if an Earth toddler had Super powers. And? There is no Kal-El. Thus, the force that rescues Kara when she lands on the planet is the American social services department. Fort Roz ain't got nothin' on the damage that underfunded, grossly understaffed organization causes. Don't believe me? Keep reading. Or see "Dear Supergirl" for more. PS Alex is 30, Kara 13.**

 **What if Kara had ended up in the notoriously abusive foster care system instead of the Danvers house? Let's see, shall we?**

"Is this really okay?" She looked up, for the first time the tiniest chink in Kara's steel emotional strength shown through, her forehead a row of questions, her eyes pools of uncertainty.

"Of course it is!" Alex's face was wide and bright with a smile, trying to encourage the young Kryptonian.

"I don't think it's okay." Her body language wasn't exactly positive. Her face returned to its normal expression, dark, emotionless, expressionless- unexploitable. Her body taught, stiff and unyielding.

"No, it is! Really!"

Kara let the kite drop as a silent answer.

"No," she shook her head. "It's not. It can't be." She backed away. "This is a waste of time. It's not productive. Kids don't even do this." She said it disdainfully, and also as if she truly believed she wasn't a kid.

It had been less than a month since Alex Danvers had been given charge of the Kryptonian girl by the DEO. She'd flown under the radar, literally, until recently, when her Earth powers had begun to manifest. (yes, think more old school Sabrina the Teenaged Witch than immediate powers SG) Alex had been leading the team that found her at National City's Ensign Home for Children. The fire had alerted the city's first responders, and the girl with the laser eyes had caught the attention of the DEO.

Standing in the middle of the park, Alex moved closer to Kara, who might be feeling more than a little bit exposed at the moment, in the open space where, as she'd put it when they'd walked out there "anyone could see us".

"I know it wasn't safe for you, it wasn't ever safe for you to be a child. You were always expected to be an adult, that's bad enough," S _he could still count on Kara to recite without a shred of emotion the physical and emotional hell that had been her life at the orphanage and in foster care. In captivity was more like it. At that moment Alex was thinking of one of Kara's latest emotionless recitation about having to steal money while in kindergaren- expected to go to buy food at the local gas station for her abusive foster mother. She walked to school alone, told to somehow steal money, then on the way home from school use the money to buy bread, butter, milk and cereal. When she'd come home without the milk because it was too heavy for her tiny five-year-old hands to carry, her foster brother'd slammed her forehead into the doorknob in gratitude._

 _That was one nice thing about Kara. If you asked her what her life was like, she had no problem telling you in graphic minute detail._

"but that you were always discouraged from showing emotion," Alex continued aloud, "or receiving physical affection and love. But it IS okay."

"No. It's only okay for children in kindergarten, or younger. Really by five you shouldn't expect to be loved anymore." They'd been going back and forth about expressions of love since earlier that morning. Kara was just picking it back up as if they'd never stopped. "You're too old. The older you get, the less people care about you."

Her child's eyes were steel, cold with excruciating experience, daring to be contradicted. Alex had no problem with that.

"That's not true!"

"You calling me a liar? I've lived it, lady." Her short blonde hair framed her face, making it seem narrow and cross.

"If that wasn't true, you wouldn't see people look away when an elderly person walks towards them. Or people stop to help a homeless child, but won't even see a homeless adult. The older you are, the less people have to care about you. If you're really old, they just wish you were dead."

There was a lot of painful truth to that. Actually, all of it. Alex thought it was a blessing the girl had only spent ten years on Earth in the hell that was the American foster care system, instead of nearly 20 like most. National City's orphans were no different than any other city. Even those lucky enough to be housed in foster care homes, they were sexually, physically, and mentally abused in the most horrific ways possible. As adults they usually ended up in prison, if not killed by pimps, Johns or committed suicide first. You can't house a lifetime of unlove and abuse into the body of a human being then magically expect them to become a happy productive member of society with loads of self respect, love and confidence at age 18. But that's exactly what was expected of these abused souls.

"You're right. About that. And that isn't right."

Kara narrowed her eyes at Alex. "Coming from the woman who thinks it's okay to hug people," she rolled her eyes and scoffed.

Alex bristled at the reminder of their latest conversation- Alex insisting it was okay to hug her. She decided to pick that up again. And again. And again. She'd keep trying.

" It's wrong to believe that once you're an adult that you don't need hugs from people- or that the only physically affection you can get has to be sexual." Alex reasoned she could use that term because Kara was well aware of adult sexual relationships, and sex in general. Or, more appropriately, rape, though Alex was certain Kara would not destinguish between the two. "Kids aren't allowed to hold hands anymore without people putting a relationship to it. But it used to be normal for friends to hold hands everywhere they go."

"But it's okay to be held. It's okay for a safe adult to hug you, or pick you up, or..." she thought about her ward's specific past, "enjoy being around you. To want to be around you. To want to see you happy."

The expressionless face told her doubts by hard and unending experience.

If you had never been shown real love in your entire existence how were you supposed to believe you could suddenly get it at age 13, out of nowhere? Or that it didn't come at a price and wouldn't be snatched away?

How could she make Kara understand that? Or open up? About anything? Speak? Just speak.

Silence.

Alex tried that. Stood in place silently for five minutes before Kara spoke.

"This whole Mary Poppins fly a kite thing? You want me to do this, but I'm acting like a five year old!" She kicked the kite on the ground towards Alex as proof.

Alex hid her smile. Kara'd barely said a complete sentence to her, so any speech, whether profanity laden, insult laden or not, was progress. At the moment Kara the Kryptonia was being as polite as the Pope.

"This is something that you enjoy, isn't it? Five minutes ago, you thought this was the coolest thing in the world."

Immediate suspicion was her answer. As if by admitting it, this thing could be taken from her. As punishment for showing her joy and love. The swift retribution of having the object of that affection snatched away to be mocked and ruined in punishment.

Alex tried returning silence again, and was rewarded. Frankly it was rare when Kara spoke at all, but slight goading and then silence seemed to be a trick Alex could use now.

Finally Kara admitted grudgingly looking at the ground, "Because no one else was around."

Witnesses. It made sense now. Alex shook her head, silently scolding herself for not realizing this oversight.

"If you act happy around other people, they'll think you're nuts and lock you away," she added. Then she shut her mouth as if she never intended to open it again. In these few weeks, Alex had learned that expression- as well as not to push Kara. It was her line in the sand.

But again Kara was right. It was wrong for adults, and teenagers to have to swallow their joy, stop expressing their joy. No more shrieks, no dancing, no jumping for joy or skipping. No physical expression of happiness was allowed for adults unless it was sexual expression. All wrong, again.

All an adult could do was self-depricatingly admit that she or he liked something. Even for the child Kara, who she still was a child, that was wrong. Had always been wrong.

At that moment Alex realized she was taking the wrong approach to this, using entirely the wrong tactic. But there was no definitive guideline here, no book to follow, so Alex couldn't fault herself for not knowing this.

It was she, the adult, who had to lead by example. Had to show Kara that expressing joy so that it could be heard and seen by others was okay. Even if it was wrong that adults and teens and even children scolded and laughed at an adult who found joy in something.

Her dark eyes met Kara's. "Can I show you one of my absolute favorite things on this planet?"

 **This might just be a one-shot. Unless anyone has some ideas, or things they'd like to see. I feed off my reader's input, and right now my brain is hungry.**

 **When was the last time (if ever) that you saw kids or adults who were just friends holding hands? IE non-sexual, platonic love?**


	2. Chapter 2

Winn Shott dumped a small library's worth of books out onto the floor. He'd wheeled in an actual wheel-barrow from which the books spilled.

"Winn, what the hell is this?" Alex stared at the pile that was spreading out like a pool of water on the floor, right in the middle of the lobby that everyone walked through.

"You said 'there's no book on this sort of thing', when referring to K ara. You were wrong."

She gave him a death stare. To imply that she was wrong was a crime. To say she was wrong out loud to her face was suicide.

To his credit, Winn ignored her.

"There may not be books on how to cope with orphaned aliens, but this girl didn't know she was an alien until the DEO intervened. She's just a traumatized girl who grew up in the system, which, if my memory serves, and it does, she was subjected to severe neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse on top of having CPTSD which is always the case with abandonded children."

Alex knelt down on the floor of the DEO lobby and glanced at the books before looking up at Winn, standing over her, waiting for a response.

"Do you have CPTSD?" She tried not to sound jugemental, but she was curious.

From Danvers' vantage point it looked at if an invisible hand pulled Winn backwards. He jumped with a start, as if struck. Instinctively, Alex was moving to her feet to defend him. She was fully upright when she realized it was just his shock at her expected question that literally threw him.

"I was nearly her age before going into the system, and the only traumatic event was my father suddenly becoming a murderer and then my mother leaving me and then ending up in a place where there was no love? You figure it out, Danvers."

Ashamed of herself, Alex looked away. Then Winn spoke again, his voice more full of anger and disgust than she'd ever heard.

"Nevermind, you won't figure it out. I have PTSD, Danvers. Not CPTSD. Because I haven't ungone enough trauma for CPTSD. I had a few isolated incidents of trauma. People who grow up being abused, or are held captive or tortured, who are in inescapable situations for years on end- those are the kids who end up with CPTSD. Mostly children get it. And while I went though a lot of trauma after I was put in the system...wait you know what? No, okay, okay, I do have CPTSD. Just because of being in the system, and being abandoned by a primary caregiver."

As he walked away she heard him angrily muttering under his breath, "You shouldn't be taking care of her, I should. You grew up in a house full of love and support and parents. You know nothing about what this kid has endured just to survive life being a shattered shell of a person."

Alex chose to give him space and allow him his feelings, but made a mental note to find a good trauma therapist, one well versed in working with adult orphans like Winn.

Later That Day, Let's Say Around Lunch Time...

The Courage to Heal

Superhero Therapy

CPTSD Handbook

Trauma Therapy

Life in the System

Childhood Traumatized

Healing the Wounds of Being Unwanted

No One Wanted Me : What It's Like Spending Life as an Orphan

Alex was back on the ground looking through the books when she heard Jonn's voice.

"The DEO took her out of the orphanage which means the DEO now takes on the responsibility of parenting this child."

"She can't stay here, J'onn," Alex kept her voice and tone both even and respectful. Though at the moment Kara was there, ostensibly working on a reading book while being closely monitored lest her powers should manifest unexpectedly.

"She needs a home."

"And you want to look after her?" He asked this, also eyeing the books on the ground.

She gave a curt, solitary nod as if confirming orders. "I could look after her."

Winn was back at his station now, and the look he gave her as she glanced his way physically hurt. Before she could get a word out, he'd pushed himself up to standing from his station at the computer, pushed the chair away and headed towards her and Jonn as if they were alien combatants, and he was wearing body armor.

"No!"

His cry was like that of a wounded child.

"It's not 'looking after' that this girl needs," he continued, eyes full of passion, certainty and pain, "that any child in the system needs! It's not babysitting. It's not watching her to make sure she doesn't stick a scissors in an electrical socket- it's care! It's nurturing! It's genuine love and wanting! She needs someone who wants her around. Someone who will be there for her for the rest of her life, not someone she's afraid is going to leave her after getting burn out."

"And," he kicked a book on the floor towards them, "Employees aren't family."

"The system is no replacement for a family. You'd be better off being raised by wolves. They have more resources than social services does. We do not want to be like social services."

"And-" he took a deep breath and it was clear saying this was hurting him in some way,

"It's not that she's lacking in love. That someone just forgot or neglected to give it to her. It's that it was actively denied to her. She was told she was unloveable, she was blamed for their abuses against her, told that it was her fault because she was a bad person. If she wasn't such a bad person these things wouldn't have happened to her..."

"She would need an army of people who love her to even undue a fraction of the damage that was intentionally done to her."

J'onn cleared his throat and spoke, once given a chance.

"Perhaps Superman could-"

"Superman abandoned her!" Schott cried out the phrase that he most wanted to yell at his own parents. "He made sure the authorities were there, yes, but he knew she was from Krypton, he knew she was his cousin and he fucking abandoned her!" Tears of rage ran down his cheeks.

Both Alex and J'onn stood silent, shocked. Winn had always been so light-hearted and joking. To see this obviously well-concealed pain was jarring.

"Do you want to care for the girl?" Jones asked him.

" I don't do well with children."

"You are a child." The teasing retort was out of her mouth before Alex could stop herself.

"My emotional growth is stunted at twelve for a reason, Danvers."Which is why I don't do well with children!"

Her answer was just as quick.

"You don't do well with children because you're jealous of what they consider problems. You're jealous of the love and support you have and you hate them because they remind you of what was taken from you."

Winn just glared at her. There wasn't much he could say to that. She wasn't wrong.

He started for the door, announcing, not asking, "I'm done for the day. I just wanted you to have these books," he spoke again, walking away, "for Kara."


End file.
